


of guilty conscience

by vanitaslaughing



Series: darkest before dawn [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jealousy, Self-Destruction, Self-Esteem Issues, Somnus Lucis Caelum Has Lost Control Of This Ship Long Ago, Stabbing, a whole whole mess, quote from king stabbed: what are you gonna do stab me?, this is a whole mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 18:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Somnus had been proud.Somnus had been furious.Ardyn was the only person around who ever acknowledged anything he did. Which made the fact that he was so unbearably jealous only worse—Ardyn had never done anything to him directly. Yet Ardyn was the centre of his admittedly petty attention. There had to be something he could do. Something that someone would acknowledge, for once. Just for once.





	of guilty conscience

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: while set in the series, can be read as stand-alone. of note here is this is a pre-teaser image take on the First Oracle, characterised in the same way she was implied to be in tu fui.
> 
> somnus, too, is based on that incarnation rather than. anything seen in the teasers.  
> and this is a "some parts of the hexatheon are Bastards zone(tm)

He couldn’t really remember when it started. Maybe it was that day he had done something and everyone praised his brother instead. Maybe it was something way earlier than that, some repressed memory of when he was barely old enough to speak. But truth be told, Somnus figured that it had begun at some point and had led to this situation that only made it worse. He had been so determined to outdo Ardyn for once.

He nearly died for his hubris, and even as he lay there with his vision swimming and his head in his panicked brother’s lap, all he could do was wonder if they would at least remember him as something more than the idiot kid who died after falling from somewhere he wasn’t even supposed to be.

“Somnus. Somnus, what were you thinking,” he choked out as he put a hand on his cheek. “Come on, stay with me. Somnus. Please. Keep your eyes open, I’ll go get… help. Somnus.”

Somnus said nothing. Something felt funny right now, and he was fairly certain that were he to speak now, something would break. Probably a few of his cracked ribs.

But the gods refused to let him die like this, comfortable and with the brother he loved even through the veil of childish jealousy. No, instead they thought it fitting that in the very moment he started to close his eyes and wanted to let go of his fading consciousness Ardyn would be granted that divine power that would see the star to its salvation. All of a sudden the horrible feeling subsided, vanished just as he had been vanishing. Everything violently shifted back to reality, to the sharp pain of broken bones rearranging themselves _out of his lung._ All of a sudden the sound was back; all of a sudden he heard people call for him and Ardyn, heard the startled shrieks when they found the children covered in blood but both unharmed.

That was the day Ardyn Izunia, his beloved brother and the one he was jealous of, died his first death. He was replaced with Ardyn Lucis Caelum, chosen by the gods. And Somnus remained Somnus, just the second-born with no special powers, torn between adoration and pride for his brother—and the undying urge to tear him apart and take his place just so someone noticed him instead of his brother for once.

* * *

It got better when Ardyn left—and it got worse at the same time.

At first, Somnus enjoyed the quiet. It wasn’t unusual for unmarried siblings to stick together until they were all married off, and being alone for once made waking up so much easier. There was no one around to constantly warrant unnecessary attention, so the entire place was so much more quiet than before. On the other hand, after the novelty of quiet wore off he started worrying. Ardyn was always prone to nightmares, and the entire country out there was not safe what with the plague going around. The plague that Ardyn had allegedly been born to banish; the plague that had just taken their neighbours the other week. It didn’t feel so long ago that this nice pair of old people had been doting on them both when they just arrived.

He leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh.

The city was quieter than before without Ardyn here, and despite all he missed his brother. Even if they were technically the island’s rulers’ children, people tended to only come here for Ardyn’s expert opinion on natural remedies. It had been Somnus who had suggested that perhaps Ardyn should take up learning about those instead of always relying on his magic powers, and that had been the first time in a while that Ardyn had cracked a small smile. He had leaned over to ruffle Somnus’ hair with that smile and then said that he would be completely lost without his little brother to keep him on his track.

Somnus had been proud.

Somnus had been furious.

Ardyn was the only person around who ever acknowledged anything he did. Which made the fact that he was so unbearably jealous only worse—Ardyn had never done anything to him directly. Yet Ardyn was the centre of his admittedly petty attention. There had to be something he could do. Something that someone would acknowledge, for once. Just for once.

He got what he wanted in the end. For the first time since he got that sword as a kid he took it up again when he heard that some beasts were making trouble. People had often wondered why Ardyn was so talented when Somnus showed nothing of the latent magical talent—and he had as well. Now he had his answer as he stood in the middle of that clearing. The woman and the strange creature that no one else seemed to see beside her stared at him with an unreadable expression. Everyone else from the city who had come with him was kind of dumbfounded.

Somnus had been the centre of the sudden storm that had swept everything away. The reason why no one ever noticed his talents had been because they had been looking for another healer from the same family; but Somnus was not a healer. Instead he had conjured up the very winds to stand by his side, to buffet everything that stood in his way away. The lady from the spirit forest beyond the ocean was completely unharmed, the people were all completely unharmed, and Somnus himself barely registered anything that was going on.

Then they started cheering.

He completely failed to point out that there was something left even as the woman from the spirit forest approached him to thank him with that strange creature still beside her. Her smile was so much warmer and more charming than anything he had ever seen, and that was the exact moment Somnus Izunia met Diantha Pax Fleuret, voice of the gods.

* * *

“I thought it was rather strange that a pair of brothers went by a different last name, especially in this part of Lucis.”

She had her hands folded on the table, her eyes closed and the Messenger of the Winds beside her. Apparently they were travelling companions at the Messenger’s request, and even though there was a mage Somnus had studied under for a while that Messenger proved to be a much better instructor than that man had ever been.

“He was the one chosen by the Hexatheon, not I,” he said meekly and stared out of the window. Diantha had been here for a while; he had even been invited back by his parents who usually acted as if he did not exist as long as Ardyn wasn’t around. Something was off, and he had a feeling that Diantha was directly involved with it—not that he minded. He enjoyed her company. “Therefore, Izunia I remain.”

She leaned forward slightly, a smile on her face as she opened her eyes again. He was certain she heard how his heart skipped a beat right there. “I can assure you the gods leave no possibility unaccounted for. You are as much worthy of that name as your brother is—perhaps even more, if things truly go the way they are set to go. That is why I was sent here, after all.”

Following that conversation, the overall atmosphere of his beloved island home changed. Suddenly he longed to be out there in the wild with Ardyn and that mercenary he had hired for his stubborn older brother; somewhere where villages had proper names instead of being a cluster of them without a name like this place. He wanted to see what lay beyond the ocean and wanted to see where the Infernian had fallen not too many generations ago. Wanted to see the remnants of Solheim that Ardyn often talked about in the small periods of time when he returned home.

He started becoming restless, and the Messenger started following him around. Something about her and her silence was off but she was mostly frowning.

Diantha meanwhile continued talking as if _Somnus_ were the truly gifted one, as if she understood the bitter jealousy that boiled beneath the surface. Somnus failed to realise that she was feeding into that feeling with a complete disregard for the fact that despite all that Somnus loved Ardyn.

The gods had just chosen the elder brother over the younger brother.

But the more time passed, the more Ardyn returned for short periods of time looking more and more miserable, the more certain Somnus became that something was off here. And every time he considered just asking Ardyn about it, Diantha was standing right behind him, too close for comfort, her hands on his shoulders as she whispered about the will of the gods. Every time Ardyn noticed that his already severe expression became a little more severe and he left—left before Somnus built up the courage to ask his brother what the matter was. Every time the people cheered for Ardyn Diantha was there, a smile on her face as she whispered that the gods had their plans and this was all part of it, but wasn’t this so very unfair?

It was.

It wasn’t.

Somnus didn’t care.

Somnus cared a little too much.

Something about Diantha was off. Sometimes she seemed like a wholly different person; meeker and friendlier around him and the other people. Then suddenly she had her arms around him again with that radiant smile on her lips again and he found himself drawn in all over again. It felt like someone had put a spell on him.

Every time Ardyn left, the mercenary Gilgamesh in tow—and Somnus remained behind in a city that still barely acknowledged him but at least had accepted him by this point, Somnus remained with that woman who spoke in the language of the gods, spoke of fate and how unfair it was.

He agreed, eventually.

* * *

“Wait! Where will you be going this time?”

At first all he heard was the sigh of a man who had long since gotten used to his eternal torment. “For some reason beyond the Risorath River in Cleigne.”

“But… what is out there between the Risorath and the Styrian Swells? The villages Lix, Bal, Walse, Istory and Regole with countless smatterings of rivers, mountains and nearly unexplored forests…?” He hadn’t been there, but he spent the last few months squeezing information of the lay of the land out of travelling merchants. “None of these sound too interesting. Is Ardyn aiming for the coast, perhaps?”

The mercenary only shook his head. “I do not think we will go as far as the coast, Milord—nor will we truly climb a mountain. That only leaves Bal by the river and Lix beside the Vesperpool as closest points of civilisation. As for why, hells if I know. You pay me to protect him, not to squeeze information out of him, as if that truly were possible.”

Unexplored forests, then. He sighed deeply; that was nearly a year of travels just for a romp through the mostly unknown, even for Ardyn’s standards. Poor Gilgamesh.

The one thing that really stung was being called ‘lord’. He bit his tongue and watched the man gallop after his charge with a ‘highness’. Gods, he hated being that jealous. On the other hand, it had just become a part of him at this point.

* * *

“I came here at the behest of the gods to help the Chosen,” she whispered once under the star-spangled sky, “against my betrothed’s explicit wishes. I know he worries because those who hear the voice of the gods oft are subject to their whims and the whims of fate, but I knew I could trust you.”

She was a friend; too good a friend perhaps. One of two people he let into his personal space, but it was not her who stood by his side when his parents died.

It wasn’t Ardyn either; he was across the country, following a plea of help from a fledgling settlement called Lestallum that overlooked the meteor that had fallen at the height of the Astral War. They had severe cases of the plague, and though Ardyn had looked tortured as he left, he went. Because that was the last thing he ever heard their parents say. That it was his destiny to save Eos, all at the behest of the gods.

But that horribly sunny day, it was a rather meek young lady who often hung around the place he would be moving into. Someone he vaguely remembered from his often overshadowed by jealousy childhood, someone who had always treated him like an equal. Ardyn’s supposed bride-to-be, an engagement Ardyn and she had broken off before they even came of age.

“Lord Somnus? Where is your lord brother?”

He stared at the sun for a moment, his eyes burning even before he lowered his head again. “I don’t know, Eirene.”

Eirene only quietly offered him her hand. Somnus accepted a third person into his personal space that day, because she offered him a hand when no one else was around to do so.

He found Diantha the next morning, standing next to the tree beside the stairs that he had nearly died under so many years ago that it felt like an entirely different lifetime.

“I came here at the behest of the gods to help the Chosen,” she said, her voice steady and devoid of any emotion, “but I am afraid there has been news. Something dark gathers over yonder, where the mountains of Cleigne meet the plains of Duscae ducked beyond the meteor.”

Where Ardyn had gone.

Perhaps it was the fact that he had gone nearly mad with grief and anger that everyone seemed to worry more about how precious, precious but absent King Ardyn would react to this tragedy. But Somnus crossed his arms, the sword at his side that Ardyn had had forged for him a few years ago after he returned from the Vesperpool an ominous weight all of a sudden.

“Perhaps it is time you tell me why you truly came, Lady Diantha.”

“I came because it was foretold that great disaster would strike this city without a name. The Draconian guides my every step; I will not let this tragedy befall this place.”

* * *

All of them had killed before; every single person present here. Even those who claimed they hadn’t had at least contributed to a murder in one way or another before, through inaction or by taking sides. Not a single person was innocent in the eyes of gods and their fellow men, but there was something extraordinarily vile about how easily that dagger tore through human flesh. No, not human flesh.

_His brother’s flesh._

For the smallest of moments he felt a deep, scathing wave of regret. No matter what the gods did or said, that was _his brother._ No matter what happened, no matter how many miles travelled stood between them, no matter how many deities said that this creature was a menace and needed to be taken down so they could bind it and wait for the proper person to defeat it to appear, it did not change the fact that he had grown up with him—be he man or monster. For an awfully long moment he doubted himself and doubted what the gods had told him to do, doubted what he had agonised over doing for hours until he saw what had happened with his own to eyes.

Ardyn would not be crumpling to the ground until someone did more severe damage to him. He survived what should not be survived, and somewhere in the back of his head a small voice told Somnus that he might have been goaded to see something that hadn’t really happened and that he had been led to kill the brother he loved despite the jealousy that nearly him see red every time Ardyn was around for more than a few hours. But, alas, Ardyn stumbled forwards a few steps even though Somnus had made certain to bury the blade between his shoulders. The man coughed a little in confusion—and the crowd gasped. There was a small black spot forming around the blade, and from the sounds of it he was coughing blood.

“Behold!” The voice rang clear and loud over the masses, and Somnus made certain to stand straight and stare at his brother’s back with as steely a glare as he could while the speaker moved to stand beside him. “That is what these monsters have done to your beloved healer! They have killed him and turned him into one of theirs!”

She clearly had no qualms about any of this. She was the voice of the gods just as Ardyn was the hands of the gods; a mortal Messenger, someone who could converse with the divine and their emissaries while also making sure that the common people were not subjects of the Messengers’ wrath. At least that was what he was supposed to be.

He realised perhaps too late that she was the wrath that she was supposed to protect mortals from, someone who took destiny into her own hands rather than submitting to it.

Or, he thought, maybe she was just as much a slave of destiny as Ardyn and he were. Perhaps this was all predestined and not once had they been able to free themselves from the chains that bound them. Ardyn turned around, the knife he had had forged somewhere on the other end of the continent just to give it to his brother after being gone for an eternity stuck between his shoulder blades. For a moment Somnus thought the world turned upside down again, and he was once more in that garden, one of his lungs punctured by his own damned ribs because he had fallen in the most unfortunate way possible, his head in Ardyn’s lap as the older child panicked and begged Somnus to stay with him. Back in a time where he knew how irrational he had been. Back in a time where Ardyn and he saw eye to eye despite their differences.

“Somnus,” Ardyn wheezed out, and the spell was broken. His glare faltered as he looked at his brother, the supposed champion of the gods that had been turned into something rather sinister. “Why?”

He opened his mouth to apologise.

But the crowd was agitated now. There was no way he could calm them down after revealing this, and for a moment he caught a strange glint in Ardyn’s eyes. The same glint that Daemons carried in the dark, this unreal yellow rather than the hazel he had long since gotten used to.

His expression froze; rather than the younger brother grovelling and asking for forgiveness as he usually did as they grew up, Somnus stood his ground. He was the one the gods had quite literally approached to help them dispose of this problem, to lock it away for centuries as they waited for someone to come fix it. Diantha had translated. If he had lied in the presence of the Hexatheon, she would have been smote for her hubris. Just as Ardyn, hand of the gods, now awaited judgement. Somnus raised a hand to calm the crowds down.

“You have until sunrise tomorrow to get out of my sight. From that sunrise forward, any one who sees you will be allowed to do with you as they please,” he said, keeping his voice steady despite the fact his heart was hammering so loudly in his chest that he swore Ardyn at least could hear it, “monster.”

Ardyn looked around the crowd, hoping to catch a familiar face. Someone who would stand up for him—Gilgamesh perhaps despite the fact that Somnus had been the one to hire him. Their parents were long dead. Ardyn had no family to speak of other than Somnus himself. And Somnus had made certain that any single person who held loyalty to Ardyn was driven out of the city before this. It was a hunt, a hunt the gods had ordered.

He just couldn’t bring himself to chain his brother up in a single place for all eternity, waiting with the tides for someone to be born who could grant him the peace that Somnus explicitly was not able to give him. No matter how much he was chosen by the gods to lead this country to prosperity until the creature that his brother would turn into brought blight upon them, there was still Ardyn somewhere in there. Somewhere.

He missed what Ardyn had said, but before he could ask what through the rising noise of the crowd, Diantha strode forward. She wrapped her arms around his arm and likely shot one of her brilliant smiles at Ardyn.

“But that is no longer yours to keep. You lost your claim to any of this the moment these creatures made a monster of you, and by the gods’ will does what belongs to the elder pass on to the younger. So doth whisper the Draconian, O creature from the dark. None shall remember you as aught but this. Now go. The sun rises quickly this time of year in Lucis.”

Ardyn stared at her. Stared at Somnus. For a moment he felt a flare of energy that he had long since gotten used to, the same energy that Ardyn had commanded ever since his first pilgrimage had taken him through the entire wretched countryside to obtain this power on top of the ability to heal anything. He hadn’t even meant to, but for a moment it felt like time had come to a standstill. Then, suddenly, almost explosively, a thin magical wall erected itself between him and his brother. Between the supposed king and his supposed people. The Crystal answered his call rather than Ardyn’s.

That scathing look of utter hatred in that moment tore through the jealousy and the anger.

He watched his brother limp off.

* * *

Things rapidly changed after that. Just the day after that, he found Diantha standing in the city centre, staring at her own hands. She was shaking slightly in the warm Lucian morning sun, her eyes distinctly unfocused. She seemed like an entirely different person all of a sudden, smaller, less proud.

Less terrifying.

“Lady Diantha?”

She snapped back into reality with that, turned around and looked at him. She had always looked determined and sure of herself, but right now all that bloomed on her face was confusion. Then, slowly, as if she were pulling herself from a dream, her eyes widened. She looked around with panic on her face.

“Lord Somnus?” She had always called him what the people would never despite calling Ardyn ‘Majesty’—prince. Never ‘lord’. “By the gods, what have we… what have we done?”

“I’m afraid I do not… follow?”

She clasped her hands together. Looked around some more. “Where is Vien?”

“The Messenger I have not seen in a few weeks. I assumed her duty had been done.”

Diantha covered her mouth with her hands. She was still quaking like a leaf in the wind. “Oh no… no, no, no.”

She fled the city after that, and Somnus found himself sleeplessly wandering the streets for a few nights. An entire group of people had left with Diantha, armed to the teeth and claiming that they would escort her to safety just in case that monster came back for a piece of the woman who helped expose it. And then they bowed, called him Majesty.

It only sounded bitter in his ears.

On the fifth day awake, Eirene joined him at the borders of the city—the city that just was several villages clustered together pretending to be more than that. The largest settlement on the continent, its own lousy country. She did not say anything at all and only offered him a hand again. It was an eerie echo of a few years ago, except that this time the tragedy he had created himself rather than been unable to change. It hadn’t really struck him until now, but he had single-handedly ruined his brother’s life because the gods told him to. Because this voice of the gods told him to. But even though they had all guided him, in the end it had been his own two hands that had severed that connection, had driven the knife between Ardyn’s shoulders just to prove a point.

He shuddered, and Eirene wordlessly took his hand. Pulled him towards her a little—but not in the strange way that Diantha usually did whenever she was standing proudly and telling him that Ardyn was corrupt. Everything she did was gentle. Way too gentle for someone who had so ruthlessly driven a knife into his own family’s flesh.

Then again, she was his family now. Everything he had left, other than their son that Ardyn would never get to meet.

“One would think this city keeps you from sleeping, Somnus.”

His voice was strangely raw when he spoke. “A city without name does keep you up, doesn’t it?”

She hummed. “The people were talking about letting you name it.”

He blinked a few times, the stars above as harshly silent as the Crystal was despite the fact that he had tried to beg it for forgiveness at least three times in the last five days. “… I suppose City of the Sleepless does not roll well off the tongue, mhm?”

Eirene laughed. “I suggest you call it Insomnia then. Wouldn’t that be ironic.”

King Somnus of Insomnia.

He only nodded and let her drag him back to the streets.

* * *

The years came and went, and everything he built for the people was grand. Everything he built for himself however turned to ash. Eirene died before Fotis even turned five summers. On his son’s fifth birthday Bahamut spoke to him exactly once, what to expect when the time came, and the price for this oh-so-divine gift he had granted this lowly mortal called Somnus. The ring on his hand weighed even heavier after that, with the Crystal bending to his every bidding but every little thing feeling wrong.

Seven summers, and Diantha returned to the city, to Insomnia. She asked him to travel with her, for she had received the powers that the gods had promised her in preparation for the inevitable day that one of her descendants would help lead the Chosen to defeat the monster that Ardyn would become. She wanted to let the people know that the plague was to be defeated and not to be feared. With Eirene dead and Fotis in the hands of the best people Insomnia had to offer, Somnus agreed.

He could have enjoyed this journey. Could have enjoyed taking the people by the hands as he led them to Diantha, would have given them sincere smiles as they started cheering for him and her wheresoever they went hand in hand. But all he could think about was the inevitable day one of his bloodline would have to face Ardyn. It could be his own grandchild. It could be someone so far in the future that even though Somnus would have his energy absorbed by that thrice-damned reward for his treachery he might not be conscious of what was going on any longer.

He barely even felt it that day he drew his own sword beside that lake and stared at it. His hands were shaking—this thing had been a gift from Ardyn. Something he had had forged with the explicit instructions to help direct the winds that Somnus commanded, and Somnus swore he saw the madness that had driven Solheim for a second.

He did not remember skewering himself on his own sword, did not remember Diantha finding him and saving his own life. All he remembered was the copper taste of his own blood, as if he was under that tree again, as if Ardyn was telling him not to close his eyes.

By the gods, those thrice-accursed gods, he was going to lose his mind. But that was exactly what he deserved, he realised after ten more summers, ten years of miserably travelling alongside Diantha and coming home to his son a stranger grown. He could have easily told the gods to solve their own problem with Ardyn, because he was not going to lay a hand on his beloved brother.

His beloved, damned brother everyone only mentioned as his late brother despite the fact that sometimes out in the wilderness Diantha suddenly changed their route, quoting that she felt something sinister in the distance. Ardyn was alive, and Somnus would soon be not.

That was only fair, he figured as he found himself impaled on a familiar blade. An Insomnia forge, in the hands of someone they had all driven to grovel in this very canyon he had strayed too close to.

It wasn’t Gilgamesh who had ended him, perhaps as revenge for the village Somnus had ordered burnt to the grounds because they would prove an issue. No, this was something gone wrong. Neither man nor monster; something stuck between unholy and almost angelic. All those scars, all those sleepless nights; they all meant nothing now.

A bright bolt blasted the creature down the canyon, and Somnus stumbled backwards. Diantha called for him, Fotis called for him despite the fact that they were just about as estranged as Somnus and his own parents had been. He wasn’t under that tree. There wasn’t someone strong enough to knit flesh that had been torn and tortured beyond its breaking point back together again—Diantha had exhausted herself too much just the night before. She would return to the spirit forest after this, back to her homeland, back to her son and daughter that she barely knew just as he barely knew Fotis.

All righteous punishment for the crime he committed out of petty jealousy. Somnus barely managed to get the ring off his finger, barely managed to look at his own son.

“The line of Lucis goes with you now,” he choked out.

This wasn’t the garden. This wasn’t the tree next to the stairs—hells, he himself had chopped that haunted tree down with his own hands after Eirene’s death. Ardyn was nowhere to be seen.

Somnus Lucis Caelum died his first and final death right here as the winds howled, far from home and even farther away from the brother he so heartlessly betrayed. That guilt he would carry with him.

* * *

Insomnia, grand Insomnia. City of restless spirits haunting the streets, of people who huddled beneath the earth, or Daemons and what other horrors the night brought.

City of betrayal.

It was only right that even after awakening when they should not have awoken quite yet Ardyn would seek him out. It was only right that Ardyn acted like the monster Somnus had had him branded all these years ago and tore the fool who carried his blessing apart to rip it away. It was only right that this creature was barely his brother any longer—it wasn’t right that it still was his brother despite all.

This was Ardyn; ever-ambitious Ardyn who wanted to live up to the high expectations their parents and the gods had placed on him, ever unforgiving Ardyn whenever something went wrong. Ardyn had been spiteful, had been unrelenting and cruel and often thought that Somnus wouldn’t notice. He was as much saviour as he was a horror but Ardyn had never let the horror side take over too much.

Just as Somnus had never let the jealousy tip the scale.

This was only right, then. But still, hundreds of years and countless kings and queens later, he found that the guilt was still as fresh on his mind as it had been back right after the fact. All those countless hours he had spent clawing his skin open with his bare hands trying not to start screaming as he travelled the countryside with a woman who looked just about as haunted as he did had existed, weighed on his mind as he realised that his brother Ardyn Lucis Caelum had died the night he had been banished from his own home. And all that was left now was a creature torn between affection and an unendingly vast sea of hatred. Hatred so intense that it dulled his already faded memories, Somnus came to realise with a jolt of terror at one point.

Ardyn didn’t even remember his face—but Ardyn did remember the feeling of a knife in his back _very_ well.

Somnus on the other hand had remembered Ardyn’s face down to every crease and every bit of stubble he missed in the mornings—what he didn’t remember was anything but that guilt he attached to that brother. No jealousy. No love.

Just a vast, vast ocean of guilt as he tried to talk to Ardyn.


End file.
